1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to the field of data processing systems and, more specifically to a data processing system, method, and computer program product for generating a generic compilation interface from object-oriented software code.
2. Description of Related Art
Java is a commonly used programming language for the Internet or world wide web. Generally, home pages including hypertext references and reference pages are written in HTML (hypertext markup language). Network browsers installed at user terminals or network servers are Java-enabled and have a Java virtual machine embedded in the browser to respond to Java programs. Applets are small programs which are designed to operate within Internet pages. Typically, the hypertext statement is underscored to indicate that its selection will effect the display of a referenced item.
“Java Beans” are portable platform-independent components written in the Java programming language. “Java Beans” or “beans” are program components that may be used and reused in applets or other Java programs. Java beans allow developers to create reusable software components that can be assembled together using visual application builder tools such as VisualAge by IBM.
Integrated development environments (IDEs) are available to assist developers in authoring software code. An IDE is typically a software application which provides software components to quickly prototype a new application. Some IDEs, such as VisualAge for Java, are visual composition environments whereby a graphical user interface (GUI) is provided to the developer to further aid in the development process.
A problem often arises, however, when using an IDE. New code designed using the IDE often depends on features, packages, methods, fields, variables, or other software code from other packages that are not available within the IDE. In order for the development environment to incrementally compile the new code, it must resolve these references to the other packages.
One solution to this problem is to import the referenced code into the IDE. The referenced code may be stored in a JAR file, thus, requiring that the JAR file be imported. Java beans are packaged and delivered in JAR (Java Archive) files, which is a technology supported by JDK (Java Development Kit) 1.1. JAR files are used to collect Java class files, serialized objects, images, help files, and similar resource files. In many Internet sessions when a user is accessing or connected to a site in the World wide web, the user may need to or desire to acquire a program or other downloadable content, typically in the form of a JAR file, from that site.
The JAR file imported into the IDE, however, often also includes code that has references to yet other code which is not included in the specified JAR and is also not included in the IDE. Sometimes this problem is compounded because the referenced code may be native to an operating system that is different and incompatible with the operating system on which the IDE is executing.
Therefore, a need exists for a method, system, and computer program product for generating a generic, compilation Java Archive (JAR) file which may be easily imported into and used within an IDE.